The shouting and gesturing continued until the ceremony collapsed into chaos. The women rushed the stage, gathering around a police chief and shouting complaints at him.

Democracy is alive in Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein, Khalaf and others may have been visited by the secret police for their remarks and then never seen again. Today, a police chief is berated, and no one fears for their lives.

Yet many Iraqis are not pleased with life. Unemployment is 35%, according to Iraq's development ministry. Electricity is spotty. Terrorist bombings are almost a daily event. Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds are still arguing over who should be prime minister nearly six months after parliamentary elections were held.

And although violence has declined from a peak in 2007, it is a constant threat.

"We had hoped to remove Saddam," says Ahmed abu Risha, a tribal leader. "But this is a lot to pay."

Americans seem to agree.

In a USA TODAY Poll, 60% of Americans say "No," when asked "Do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going to war over?" Similar majorities either felt that the war did not make the USA safer from terrorism or made no difference. The same was said of whether the political situation in the Middle East is more stable.

At the same time, 52% of Americans say that Iraqis are better off as a result of the war; 20% believe they are not.

The results of the Aug. 21-22 poll come as the United States prepares to officially end combat operations in Iraq on Tuesday. President Obama will travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, on Tuesday to meet with troops and will deliver an address that evening from the Oval Office.

By the end of the month, troop levels will go from a high of more than 160,000 servicemembers in 2007 to fewer than 50,000. Most of those who remain will focus on training Iraqi police and soldiers to take over the nation's security.

The seven years of fighting cost the lives of more than 4,400 Americans. The financial cost of the war for the United States has been more than $748 billion, making it the most expensive U.S. war apart from World War II in current dollars.

As U.S. involvement winds down, and forces prepare for a full withdrawal in 2011, experts are asking, "Was it worth it?"

"When asked if the French Revolution (1789-99) had been a good idea, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai supposedly said (two centuries later), 'It's too early to tell,' " says military scholar Max Boot. "The same might be said for the war in Iraq."

Scholars, former government officials, military experts as well as politicians agree it is too early to tell whether the terrible cost in lives and treasure will be worth an outcome that will not be fully known for years, even decades. Even so, many say they do not have to wait any longer to make up their minds.

"We've lost so many of our young soldiers, and I feel pretty heartbroken about it," says Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., an opponent of the Iraq war from the beginning. "It couldn't possibly be worth it."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, a former Connecticut Democrat who won re-election as an independent on a pro-Iraq war platform, disagrees.

"We are significantly safer as a result of what I consider to be a victory in Iraq," he says. "It cost too much; it went on too long; mistakes were made along the way. But ultimately, if we had withdrawn, it would have had a devastating impact on the entire Middle East and our credibility in the world.

"I think it was worth it."

Looking back: From 1990 to now

This moment in history is the culmination of a confrontation that goes back 20 years to the Gulf War of 1990.

When Saddam refused to allow U.N. inspections of his weapons facilities, Bush argued that Saddam "needs to let inspectors back in his country, to show us that he is not developing weapons of mass destruction."

In October 2002, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to authorize force against Iraq. In November 2002, the United NationsSecurity Council adopted a unanimous resolution offering Saddam "a final opportunity" to comply with disarmament.

Three months later, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. and European intelligence agencies believed Iraq was hiding its weaponry and seeking more.

The final U.N. weapons inspection report stated that Iraq failed to account for chemical and biological stockpiles. Lead U.N. inspector Hans Blix stated he had "no confidence" that the weaponry had been destroyed.

In his State of the Union Address in January 2003, Bush said: "Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."

At 5:34 a.m., March 20, 2003, a U.S. force backed by 34 nations crossed into Iraq. The war was on.

In the ensuing years, the war saw failures and unforeseen consequences. No weapons of mass destruction were found, and a violent insurgency arose that shocked many.

There were successes as well. Millions of Iraqis braved terrorist death threats to vote in free and fair elections in 2005. Saddam's regime was deposed, and democratic institutions moved into his palaces and ministries. Violence eventually plummeted.

'Too soon to tell'

"The war has brought the Iraqi nation a hope for the future that didn't exist under Saddam's rule," says retired Army lieutenant general James Dubik of the Institute for the Study of War. "That's a huge thing."

Was it worth it?

"The bottom line is that it's too soon to tell," Dubik says. "Wars are not won by just the fighting."

Dubik says diplomatic and economic efforts will determine whether the war brings about another war or a better peace. He also says it will take 20 years to play out. Among the things Iraq needs to succeed are effective security forces, the creation of an independent judicial system and an improved economy.

Many Iraqis see only a war's aftermath in which the economy is sputtering and life remains hard.

"What you see in Iraq is not victory," says abu Risha, the tribal leader, who says he gets only five hours of electricity a day. "Yes, we are victorious against al-Qaeda. But after seven years, the country still lacks power."

Some Iraqis blame their government. When asked, they freely criticize their leaders, using hot-headed words among friends.

"It isn't politics," says Qasim Sabti, a painter who sat in the courtyard of his gallery, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes with other artists. "It's looting."

"We had one dictator," Sabti says. "Now we have hundreds of dictators."

Jasim al-Halbusi, chairman of the Anbar provincial council, says little has been gained and much made worse.

"The Americans only left death and destruction — handicapped people, orphans, widows, an immature political system," he says. "This is what we get with U.S. liberation and democracy."

Supporters say that seven years after the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square was toppled, the Iraqis have a freely elected government, are rid of a regime that murdered hundreds of thousands of their people, and are slowly but steadily rebuilding an oil industry that sits atop the world's third-largest oil reserves.

"There has to be a price for anything," al-Emari says. "Democracy cannot be given. It has to be taken. We must heal eventually."

Salman Hassan, a 63-year-old investor, sat with a group of men in the Iraqi Stock Exchange, which was recently computerized, and watched prices change on a large computer screen. Air conditioners offered a respite from temperatures in Baghdad that were climbing toward 110 degrees. "When the government settles, everything else will settle," he says. "There is going to be stability."

Prices on the fledgling market, which only lists 84 companies, have been sluggish lately because of the political uncertainty and new central bank requirements that have diluted bank shares, says Laith al-Timeemi, a 33-year-old broker and member of the exchange's board of governors.

Even so, he expects prices to rise as Iraq's government begins to focus on reconstruction projects and starts attracting foreign investment.

The market shrugged off a wave of recent bombings: "We're used to it," Timeemi says.

Meanwhile in the United States, "we know that years of effort have toppled one of the world's most dangerous and unpredictable dictators and prevented a terrible defeat that would have occurred if al-Qaeda in Iraq and its Shiite counterparts had succeeded in chasing us out prematurely, " says Boot, the military scholar and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

If Iraq veers into chaos, "much of the effort we have expended will have been wasted."

John Bolton, U.N. ambassador under Bush, says there's no need to wait to determine whether the war was worth the price.

Deposing Saddam's regime was "unquestionably correct" because it kept him from acquiring nuclear weaponry, which Bolton says he surely would have done given that the sanctions effort against him was about to crumble.

"Achieving that objective was materially in the interests of the United States, and the world is a better place," he says, adding that America's show of strength against Iraq is what persuaded Libya's Moammar Gadhafi to dismantle his atomic bomb program and destroyed much of al-Qaeda's operational capacity.

But Bolton says mistakes made after the invasion may blight other benefits of the war.

"I would have turned over authority to the Iraqis as quickly as possible to try to put government in the business of politics instead of a different business. We're still playing out the consequences of not having done that."

In Anbar province, what was once the heart of the Sunni insurgency that cost so many lives is now one of the most secure areas in Iraq. Today, America's greatest enemy is now Anbar's as well.

"People of Anbar have issued a death warrant to al-Qaeda," abu Risha says.

War opponents in the USA say the true enemy of Iraq is the United States.

"I don't think there's been any measurable thing that we could cite that this occupation of Iraq has made better. We achieved exactly nothing," says Cindy Sheehan, an anti-war activist. Sheehan says the war made things worse for Iraqis and others.

"My work has gone from trying to stop these wars to trying to alert people to the problems of being subjects of a military empire," she says.

Howard Dean, who rode a wave of anti-war sentiment to come close to capturing the 2004 Democratic nomination for president, says no one knows yet whether the war was worth it.

"If Iraq should, against the odds, turn into a liberal democracy, then we would say it was worth it," he says. "The problem is, the odds are against it."

"I wish the Iraqis well. I hope they succeed and prove that I was wrong when I came out against the war in 2003."

Reporters Mimi Hall and Jim Michaels, author of A Chance in Hell, answered your questions on the Iraq war.

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